Preemptive ABA 2009 Nominations

“For the awards, do you nominate your favorites or the ‘objective’ best?”

“wut”

Here, lolikit and lelangir take a look around the ‘sphere and discuss whom they would nominate for what if the Anime Blog Awards were to take place this instant. We only address those categories we thought would give us things to talk about, and, of those, some are more organized than others. Please weigh in with your own thoughts on the topics at hand in the comments, as this is more than a popularity contest.

Best Editorial

Editorial is a broad term. I guess in my own view, you have the bateszi/IKnight/Lawson style of commentary, and then there are the more analytic pieces. Not that styles and bloggers are mutually exclusive, of course.

Lawson-style is, in more cases than not, just fanboying about something with airy diction that makes said fanboying sound harmless. All the while it infects his readers and turns them into automatons of love and moe! It is a disease! A diseeeeeeeease!!

Favorite (non-meta) commentary: IKnight & bateszi. I’m not surprised it’s the brits with the flowerly writing. I don’t read bateszi, I think because Owen‘s hero-worship turned me off. If you hold him in such high regard, maybe I should change my ways? I guess it’s like eating, as IKnight would say, a very dark, rich chocolate cake.Well. I’m going to throw some nomnomnominations the way of Mike and jpmeyer, because I am living in the past. Take that! I remember jvaldez being an enjoyable read, but he’s been kinda dead lately.Most Thought-Provoking

For little old me, thought-provoking in the ‘sphere has come to mean “RyanA, ghostlightning, Cuchlann, and lelangir debating something on a grossly meta level, replete with literary references and the names of psychologists.” That gives me over nine thousand directions to go in for listing blogs, as we’ve got RyanA’s one blog, Cuchlann’s two, ghostlightning’s threefour, and… well, I can’t even begin counting all the blogs lelangir posts at. Ten, I think.

If you were to put a gun to my head, however, I’d list the following three for most thought-provoking:

It’s a powerhouse of insight. It’s got three of the deepest writers in the ‘sphere. I must admit that I am not too familiar with Kaiserpingvin, but to be fair he’s only written on the site twice. I’m a special fanboy of Pontifus because he waxes literary on Aria from time to time, which gets me bothered and hot. I’d say, no offense to ponti-dono, that Cuchlann is easily the most thought-provoking blogger in the ‘sphere. I think OVER 9000 WORDS can attest…if you’ve read it. He basically kicks my ass and proceeds to rape me. I never said Pontifus was deeper. Just sexier. Not everyone has a rape fetish (to the relief of my next pick!). LOL, I finally get that joke after reading “public enemy #2″; priceless, really.

No, this isn’t a joke. Nor is it a troll. The reasoning behind this pick might not be what our “ever lovable blogger” SVS might hope for, but I think it’s justified: Anime Almanac gets me thinking about why certain lines of thinking fail and why certain styles of blogging are better than others. I guess it’s harsh to say “your failure has made my mind stronger,” but it’s true. Thanks, Scott. Ah, you see, this is one reason why the category “thought-provoking” fails. A blog you find stupid can be very thought-provoking. Hell, I find Sankaku Complex fairly thought-provoking at times. Does that mean it fails? I don’t think so. We still have “Best Editorial” for those blogs that have truly good… well, editorials.

ghostlightning, beyond collaborating with lelangir and others (myself included), has helped me reexamine my place in the ‘sphere. He has given me reason to continue applying “lolikitean understanding” (IcyStorm’s testicular prespiration helps(ønlÿ For WôRMs LIKE Yöu who dó nOT Understand!)) in my reading of anime, and he has caused me on multiple occasions to pause and… for lack of a better word… think about things more than I otherwise would. In other words, he’s kept me in check, kept me pondering, kept me sharp. That’s thought-provoking, and that’s ghostlightning’s ever lovable (no joke here) blog. Well, what would you expect from a 30 year old dude who’s studied philosophy and literature? You could say, “just as planned.” He’s like the Kamina to my Simon…

Coburn was one of the first blogs I frequented when I was starting out. What I like about his writing is that it is very theoretical, often providing frameworks with which to analyze anime. I don’t see this very often, but another great case is IKnight’s seminal pieces on GAR. I will specifically mention coburn’s “Reaction Porn” theory which insightfully distinguishes between character “development” and “revealment,” though he’s told me elsewhere the distinction thereof has more to be said.

Best Meta

If there’s one important lesson that the recent crop of metablogging has yielded, it’s that “blogs” don’t define blogosphere content as well as “bloggers” do. As such, it would almost be counter to the teachings of meta-anibloggery to nominate blogs in this category.

Actually, fuck hedging.

It would be counter to the teachings of meta-anibloggery. [but that’s why I said the ABA should nominate bloggers not blogs…]

There, I said it. And I make no nominations.

I think you’re forgetting ani-nouto and anitations. Yes, author is probably the best meta-blogger out there. If you don’t like his trolling, don’t take him seriously. I’d like to say anitations has great meta value because it’s a proxy. I lens content, as RyanA would say. So far, these are two of a kind…

I don’t know if I’m forgetting them; mostly I’m thinking about you guys as bloggers rather than blogs. I don’t see how that makes a difference… It’s hard to divorce lelangir from lelangiricism. Meta-anibloggery essentially preaches separation of aniblog and aniblogger. Wait, we need to expand “meta”. I’d take “meta” for discourse on discourse. Introspection counts too. And in that case, I’d nominate usagijen for her awesome introspections. BigN and Jacob Martin come in close as well. Doesn’t TheBigN say the same thing everytime, though? Something about love, peace, and pancakes? No, =p =p =p =peace =pancakes Q.E.D..

Best Music

I’ll let you handle this one, lelangir. I don’t read music aniblogs; as far as I’ve heard there aren’t many, they aren’t diverse, and they tend to suck. All yours, capitan. Zzeroparticle. He’s like, the only person that writes consistent music reviews. I don’t think I’ve ever seen musical analysis besides mine either…

Then we are agreed: this is a category that actually fails. Yes, that’s kind of a shame, because the music community is so pathetically underdeveloped. I wish it were developed, but sadly, it isn’t… I’d love to see that, too—I hear you’re thinking of starting something up? But – and this is a constant debate in the metaverse – society isn’t up to the level of technology. Usually technology is a product of society. But I can’t just go make a music blog if there’s no plausible readership or niche there. It’s like that Heisei Democracy post where there’s this manga cafe in San Francisco. It can’t work because they’re attempting to transplate Japanese culture in America – they’re trying to force society to adapt to them, and it’s like trying to move an elephant with a toothpick. Makes sense, yeah. Well, best of luck should you try in the future!

Rookie of the Year

ghostlightning, digitalboy, and lelangir all seem like fairly solid choices to me. I’m not familiar with too many of the newer blogs, but those three are all rookies who bring a fuckton of positive energy to the table. ghostlightning is Mizunashi Akari if she were to fangirl about something. digitalboy is Mizunashi Akari if she were to make home videos and introduce profanity into her vocabulary. lelangir is Mizunashi Akari if she were the biggest slut ever. And as you all know, I love Mizunashi Akari. Yes I am a whore.

What? … digitalboy isn’t a rookie? Older than one year.

Fuck that shit. He’s a noob, and I’ve got no one to refill his place. The halo glows away…

You’re forgetting coburn, pontifus and itsubun – they’re my three picks. It’s a shame that itsubun died off so quickly, but she made quite a large impact on me when I was starting out, especially with the dorama surrounding her and Sasa, lol. The pointless, idiotic drama between two idiots who just can’t leave well enough alone… sigh. Do they at least get points in the drama category? You’d be surprised, I took quite a bit out of some posts, as they really were great food for thought. That was not the impression I got from reading Sasa’s posts and talking to Mr. Pippers. The impression I did get was that some people were overreacting to each other and accomplishing little. There was one post by adventure_killy which was one of the most insightful posts I’ve read to date. It really got me thinking about the “location” of the otaku, and how we use loan words and how culture is transplanted.
I can’t say much for coburn nor do him justice, only that his intelligent editorials are always a pleasure to read.Best Multiple-Author Blog

Yes, you may think that OH is really a team blog but their content isn’t – as far as the reader is concerned – heterogeneous. I have heard there is quite a bit of teamwork behind the scenes, but if that teamwork is used only to produce homogenous content, I can’t see much difference. In any case, OH has the most awesome content (and at a prodigous rate) on an aggregate blog I’ve seen in a while. Did you somehow miss the two weeks of team posts (lame example)? In any event, you’ll be changing your tune by the ABAs… OH! has some sick shit to unleash! I’m concerned about these GATTAI posts, whether they’re actually any good or not…oh shi- They would be if Riex had us using Google Docs for collaboration. Talk about underused utility!

Aaaand… who else? I’m disinclined to give awards to the would-be shoe-ins THAT or Yukan (THAT isn’t even qualified this year, right?), for the sole reason that they’re just same-old, same-old. An aggregate blog gets a bit tedious after a while, especially if the authors come and go without changing much.

How’s it like over at Calamitous Intents? To be honest I don’t read them much, but they seem fresher than THAT-spawn. I don’t read them much either since I don’t follow the media they blog, VN’s and the Naruto manga.

I’m stumped. Did we decide there are no true team blogs? OH! is trying to be one, other aggregate blogs aren’t trying, and whorish team bloggers are sort of wrecking the status quo’s shit. Fun stuff! Yes, I haven’t seen any true tream blogs, per se (I don’t know if epicwin counts), though many blogs and their constituent bloggers exhibit teamwork. Oh. Epic Win! Why did I forget them? They definitely count.

GO TO EPIC WIN!! GO TO EPIC WIN!! I’ll show you the true meaning of epic win…

Most Influential

I’m calling #1 right now – derailedbydarry.comIts influence should be obvious; “we hold these things self-evident.”

I’ve said this a million times in a million posts, none of which I’ll link here, that Lovely Kitsune was the one person who introduced me to anime blogs. While Jason Miao is technically the catalyst of the reaction that created “lolikitsune,” if it weren’t for LK-senpai I never would have even gotten that far. I never would have discovered the then-AOMM, I never would have begun blogging, and, as I point out in my most digustingly self-loving post ever, the aniblogosphere would have developed very, very differently. You make a point – it’s hard to determine “influence.” I can’t say I directly copy or strive to emulate any particular blogger to the point of fetishism, and because I don’t read Danny Choo or Dark Mirage or Jason Miao I’m kind of clueless on how these big guys have influenced the entire sphere over the years. It’s not that we aspire to emulate (though I did emulate Miao as a joke for a while), it’s that these people used to be big players in a very small sphere. Now that the ‘sphere has grown, the percentage of said sphere that is these Ancient Ones’ penises is smaller. So they’re less directly influential on new people… but they shaped the sphere in big ways.

Hm, well, I guess I have to give credit for IKnight for being my gateway blogger. If it weren’t for his MAL profile and “Colonial Code Geass & Narnian Nerve Gas” I might not be here today. I can see IKnight being a huge influence, especially for the editorial types who came before him and were like “OMG! I gotta shape up!” (here’s looking at you, Mike *clink*). I…I…I..it’s n..n..not that I’d call blogging about soap influential or anything!

Best Dorama

I make a point of ignoring this shit as best I can because more often than not it’s sparked by spiteful elitists. My favorite drama would be Omo x Owen on Twitter, but does that count? I don’t know; it’s certainly not a blog, though. Perhaps we could award Owen with something for sparking so much drama (he was getting me good, at least, in mid-November), but that might be erring on the side of “too close to home.” Actually, these past few months, I’d give best dorama to a sort of plane of bloggers revolving around the fansub thing, Von Schilling et al. It even gets IcyStorm all hot and bothered. Oh yeah. SVS. Sigh. I guess… I guess I WOULD give him this award. (Let’s see how that affects his self-perception as “ever lovable.”)

Best Satire

Obviously I think I should win in this category. I won’t make any nominations here because I don’t want it to look like I’m setting up losers, but I will gladly comment on lelangir’s picks. I also like lolikit’s satire because, while it is hilarious, it is also lucid and insightful. Though I enjoy lolikit’s meta-satire moreso than when he satires anime. Of course Baka-Raptor is up there when he makes fun of anime. Who’m I kidding? Baka-Raptor is a king of satire. Hinano is also quite sharp quite frequently, as is JP (and now that they’re on a single blog it’s only one nomination! Take that, blogger’s bloggers!). I was never really into HINANO RAEG… Her blog posts are usually better than her tweets. Maybe it’s just the emoticons? They make me laugh while thinking, “man, this shit she’s posting about, it’s so shitty.” You know I’d put IKnight up here too. His satire is subtle (it’s British), but boy is it hilarious. Didn’t he quit blogging or something? lol he’s been alive for quite a few posts now. He was pretty active while in blogohiberation anyway. Not to say inactivity’s going to stop me from making my third nomination in this category…

I’ve beaten this dead horse to the metaphorical pulp, but I’ll beat it again. Lovely Kitsune is my hero. If it weren’t for him, I never would have discovered three important things: loli, yuri, and a sense of humor. Oh, and a fourth: the aniblogosphere. He’s a shoe-in for most influential, but the important thing here is how he roped me in, and that would be masterful satire played to its fullest. His wit broadened the anus of my sense of humor and left me wanting more. … “dial-up would never suffice again.”

Yeah, well, him and Owen having sex is pretty funny to watch. Especially on twitter. Agreed, but refer to what I wrote under Best Dorama. Their bickering isn’t satire… it’s high school girl idiocy.

“WHORE! WHORE!”

AAAAAND that’s it. This is lolikit bee tee dubz, stealing lelangir’s color briefly. Just wanted to wrap stuff up with extremely awkward and un-funny words such as these. I hope you read everything, as there’s some good stuff up in there. Again, please weigh in on the “discussion”—this is more than a popularity contest; there’re issues addressed in the above with implications affecting the entire ‘sphere. Also, could we get some applause for Google Documents? An omiclap, perhaps? Thank you.

Thanks for the recognition, lelangir! Alas, the anime music community is still as stagnant as it has been since the last time I emailed you, not that I had been expecting it to grow in less than a month or achieve some sort of minor miracle. But it’s a brand new year and with luck we might see some positive signs of growth in 2009.

I’d still like to toss animekritik in here somewhere, though I’m not sure which category in specific. Otherwise, your picks sound pretty reasonable to me, and I’d be shocked if ghost doesn’t win something

I can take a guess why the anime music community is so flat right now. Because music reviews are hard to write. Believe me, I’ve tried. It’s not like anime which is basically a form of literature. You’re taught the basics of how to analyze literature in school, and you can expand on that from experience and reading other people’s reviews and analyses. Only very few anime fans have a technical background in music, which is pretty much a must for writing about music. And even then it’s still not easy to write about.

I think there’s an audience out there for anime music blogs. People want to know what anime has good music. It just seems to me that there’s not too many writers who have a sufficient background in music who are willing to dedicate the time to publish articles about anime music on a regular basis. Which makes sense, because it’s a hard thing to do. If you want to do it in any sort of depth, then you really need to spend a lot of time thinking about the nitty-gritty details of the music.

I’m not sure I really buy that argument though. There are plenty of similarities between anime fans and gamers, and yet, if you look at the game music community, it’s a lot more organized, highly profiled, and widespread than anime music, and it’s been this way since the late 90s. The assumptions I’m making here is that the music backgrounds between anime fans and gamers are similar, so one cannot account for the disparity simply through the background knowledge alone. My speculation is twofold: a general lack of passion amongst anime fans with regards to the music and that the gamer population is simply bigger.

@zzero: My assumptions are faulty because I don’t (oh jesus no pun intended) “get out enough” – out of the aniblogosphere. I like sorrow’s point though. And this is also mirrored by how the “academic” (oh shiet…) aniblogosphere community is comprised of a fistful of people – no one cares. Remember in those Beanbrew posts when someone was like “I see no musical analysis” – no one cares about musical analysis. Not that that’s intrinsically bad, but the collective desire for more substantial writing on music doesn’t exist.

@ghost: well, I if he doesn’t raep me he groped and violated the shiet out of me? In any case I learned A LOT from that discussion.

I don’t agree that a technical background in music is necessary to write about it — I view that assertion in the same way I would view someone insisting one must have a background in linguistics to write about literature. It’s missing the forest for the trees, to use that old saw. Basically, writing about music would be like writing about anime, or literature: examining the effect it had upon you in a (more or less) thoughtful way.

Now, not having anything to *say* about music (like, uh, me), that’s entirely different. Though I do have this one random idea… Get back to you on that one.

This isn’t a plug since I have no real interest in participating in these awards (sorry, not this year), but I consider myself something of a connoisseur of anime and video game music even though I will fully admit to having no real expertise in the field of music. Nevertheless as a result of my passion for anime and game music I’ve often found it fun and interesting to write in detail about various anime and game soundtracks and to try and get the word out about various composers, popular music styles and trends in anime. and albums that I am fond of, even if I can’t say I’ve met with very much success. Still, I would say the only thing that is really required to be a writer about about anime music is a genuine passion for the subject, and that I can safely say I have.

Truthfully I’m startled and overjoyed to see that there is such a demand for writers about anime music, and since it’s currently a topic that I’m interested in pursuing while I deal with writer’s block about general anime subjects I would be more than happy to take up the mantle of being the blogger to focus on writing about anime and game music if that’s something that people are looking for. Really nothing would make me happier.

Anyway, if anyone is interested in what I’ve written about anime and game music so far then by all means I invite people to check out the music category on Anime History. If there one thing I’d love it’s to spread the word about this often unnoticed aspect of anime and games that I thinks has just as much of an impact on the overall experience as visuals, story and characters.

Cuchlann: …I agree on the fallacy of my logic but here, really, can you separate theory from practice?

It’s probably possible to have a music community that doesn’t know any technical aspects of music, but having a little bit of knowledge would, nevertheless, help immensely, though that’s not really the issue in the first place is it?

@lelangir: I suppose, for purposes of this conversation — which I should have checked before now, oops — “theory” would be “formal training in proper theoretical structures, including hard-to-remember names and other hegemonical power markings.” ; ) Do I think one can talk about music without those? Yes. But you’re right, in the broadest sense theory is going to be entwined in practice — and in the praxis of *talking* about the music. But I think a lot of bloggers are being scared away from discussing music because they haven’t taken classes in music or music theory, and I don’t think that’s good for anything other than creating an elite grouping of people. It reminds me *far* too much of the other MFA students who say one can’t really criticize creative writing without being a creative writer (read: one who writes poetry, fiction, &c).

Actually my favorite part of this piece is probably the first measure. The melody hits that lower f# to harmonize the nice emin9. It’s hard to describe the quality of minor ninth chords. They have a similar “suspended” quality like that of perfect fourths, though the only interval of a fourth is with the fifth, B. Hmmm…

Yeah, that’s me masturbating.

The subtleties of this piece blended in with the scenery too, the high parts, twinkling, a lot like stars would, in a poetic sense. The higher register sounds delicate – it’s when Taiga let’s her shield down, she cries, the viewer is treated to her memories. Ryuuji is there, ubiquitous, the dog? The piece itself is sparse, not busy, not clustered, cold, the scene was too, we suppose, as MoritaRyuuji wraps HaguTaiga in a scarf. Nor is the piece resolved. It ends in an ambiguous arpeggio of fourths and fifths, a lack of finalized thirds to accompany the hazy stars that fade in and out of sight. I guess, for Taiga, tears obstructed their light.

I’d say that’s comprehensible “for those not situated within the terrain of my hegemonic discourse markers”.

So on the one hand, I don’t wanna compromise what I want to write about for the sake of readability. I tried to translate that first paragraph in overly sarcastic laymen’s terms:

But even there, you need to know wtf a “note” is and wtf a “measure” is. Those are pretty irreducible terms, perhaps.

But yeah, given how rarely I talk about music, and how absurdly painful it is to transcribe sometimes, I’ll refrain from using ‘dem big mofuckken werds in an attempt to foster more musical discussion…in the act compromising myself but oh well…

I think “note” is pretty well understood, so while it’s probably possible to avoid using the word, I don’t think it’s necessary. However, even though I know already what a “measure” is, I think it would be pretty simple to avoid using it, if it were necessary. However, most papers written to people of similar writing/reading backgrounds will “define terms,” so I don’t see why you couldn’t make some short of musical-critique cheat-sheet and refer/link to it whenever you didn’t know if someone would know what you were talking about.

On the other hand, I would probably just say “the bit at the beginning/middle/end.” And, again, I *do* know what a measure is.

I was talking, I suppose, in general. I don’t really think you need to change the way you blog about music; I just don’t want people thinking that, if they can’t talk about it the way you (or another theory-educated person) can, they can’t talk about music at all. Freedom for all!

@lelangir: Well, but remember the indie kid phenomenon (not as helpful as cup yakisoba phenomenon), wherein they’ve set up a hegemony *within* a counter-culture. Like goth kids, who base rank on plumage.

@Cuchlann: refer back to this. Essentially, the subculture is not so monolithic, and is comprised of different echelons each having a different degree of awareness of the subculture itself. It’s probably a lot harder for hegemony to be established within the meta echelon over the meta echelon itself (i.e. Owen over us).

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